8 The Marchioness of Hastings on the Tertianj Beds 



are sometimes met with nearly perfect ; all the other bones are 

 much rolled, and hardly recognisable. 



Melanopsis brevis occurs in this bed. 



Stratum 12 averages from about 1 to 2 feet. It consists of 

 green clay. There is near the top a seam of Potamomyae, and 

 occasionally some of these are found scattered through it, but 

 no other fossil remains are found in this bed. 



Stratum 13 varies from 6 to 8 feet in thickness. It is a bed 

 of white sand, which is very variable in colour. As it rises it is a 

 deep iron-gray, and continues this colour for some hundred yards. 

 As it proceeds westward, it becomes a buff tinged with iron. 

 There is, near the commencement, a small band of green clay 

 running through it, about 2 inches in depth, but this disappears. 

 Poiamomya, Paludina, seeds, wood, and leaves (like flags tra- 

 versing the bed in all directions) are found here ; very rarely 

 Planorbis rotundatus and platystoma and Limneus longiscatus', but 

 no animal remains have ever been met with but once. Very far 

 to the westward, at the base of the bed and near its termination, 

 a series of about thirty bones, evidently belonging to the same 

 animal, a Palseotheroid, were found in the space of a few yards. 

 They consisted of the ungual phalanx, two metacarpal, and a 

 carpal bone, an astragalus, the trochanter, and part of pelvis, 

 rib bones, vertebrae, &c., — all strongly impregnated with iron. 

 A stone containing much vitriol is found here, in masses like 

 scoriae. At the base of the stratum is a small layer of stone 

 about 2 inches thick, from which some pigment or colouring 

 material is prepared. 



Stratum 14 varies from 2 to 4 feet in depth. It consists of 

 an iron-gray clayey sand, which towards the base is coloured 

 with iron. It is full of leaves and fruit, which generally are 

 found lying in a horizontal direction throughout the bed ; but 

 the stems, of which there are an immense number, intersect the 

 bed perpendicularly, or at right angles in every direction. There 

 are several kinds of leaves and fruit, but I am not aware of any 

 named list of them having as yet been published. It would 

 appear possible, from the position of the leaves and stems, which 

 is what one observes in stagnant pools of water, that they had 

 m i finally grown where they are now found in a fossil state. The 

 depth of the bed is quite sufficient for this to have been the 

 case, and had these plants been brought to this bed by a run- 

 ning stream of water, they would not have been found in the 

 same relative position as they are. 



Stratum 15 is the last of the purely freshwater strata. It 

 varies from 20 to 25 feet in depth, and is the most productive 

 in animal fossil remains of the whole series. Its deposits are 

 very varied and well defined. It commences with a band of 



